Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, May 11, 2010


As I peruse Charleston, S.C. restaurant menus...

(*SIGH*)

By the way... I remember seeing the movie at Radio City Music Hall with my parents when it first came out...

Dating myself...
Posted by at

12 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9FKQHJO0&show_article=1

Congressional budget referees say President Barack Obama's new health care law could potentially add another $115 billion over 10 years to government health care spending.

* OOPS... (*SMIRK*)

If Congress approves all the additional spending, that would push the 10-year cost of the overhaul above $1 trillion - an unofficial limit the Obama administration set early on.

* SO... WERE THEY SIMPLY LYING ALL ALONG... OR IS THIS SIMPLY (MORE) EVIDENCE OF INCOMPENCE ON A MASSIVE SCALE?

May 11, 2010 at 3:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704250104575238130707230588.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews

* OUR GOVERNMENT IN ACTION, KIDS... (*MASSIVE HEADACHE AND UPSET STOMACH*)

The Senate adopted an amendment Tuesday to the financial-overhaul bill that would boost transparency of the Federal Reserve's emergency lending actions during the financial crisis.

Lawmakers voted 96-0 to incorporate the modified amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who scaled back his original language last week to overcome White House objections.

* SOUNDS PROMISING, HUH...? (*SNORT*) THINK AGAIN.

* FIRST OF ALL... THEY DIDN'T ACTUALLY ADOPT A BILL - PASS A LAW; NOPE, THEY PASSED AN AMENDMENT TO A BILL WHICH HASN'T BEEN PASSED AND MAY NOT BE PASSED.

* WHY COULDN'T A "AMENDMENT" WITH SUCH OVERWHELMING SUPPORT (96-0) BE PASSED AS A STAND-ALONE LAW...??? ASK HARRY REID... HE'S SENATE MAJORITY LEADER; ASK NANCY PELOSI... SHE'S SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE.

Directly after the Sanders amendment vote, the Senate rejected, 62-37, an amendment by Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) that contained Mr. Sanders' original language. The Vitter measure went further than the modified Mr. Sanders measure in the audit powers given to the federal government, including allowing for ongoing audits.

The new Sanders amendment, for instance, would explicitly bar the Government Accountability Office from auditing day-to-day discount window operations and interest-rate decisions, while the Vitter language didn't.

(*SMIRK*)

"It really can't be called a complete audit," if it doesn't look at monetary policy decisions, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said of Mr. Sanders' amendment, urging colleagues to vote for Mr. Vitter's measure as well.

May 11, 2010 at 4:25 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703674704575235141350028342.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond

Last week I asked Bernard Lewis where he thought Turkey might be going. The dean of Middle East historians speculated that in a decade the secular republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk might more closely resemble the Islamic Republic of Iran—even as Iran transformed itself into a secular republic.

* COMING FROM BERNARD LEWIS... (*SIGH*)... WE SHOULD ALL BE CONCERNED... DEEPLY CONCERNED.

Gone are the days when the country had a strategic partnership with Israel, involving close military ties and shared enemies in Syria and Iran and the sundry terrorist groups they sponsored. Gone are the days, too, when the U.S. could rely on Turkey as a bulwark against common enemies, be they the Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Since coming to power in 2002, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dramatically recast the traditional contours of Turkish foreign policy. Today, Mr. Erdogan has excellent relations with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, whom the prime minister affectionately calls his "brother." He has accused Israel of "savagery" in Gaza and opened a diplomatic line to Hamas while maintaining good ties with the genocidal government of Sudan. He was among the first foreign leaders to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his fraudulent victory in last year's election.

The military, long the pillar of Turkish secularism, is under assault by Mr. Erdogan's Islamist-oriented government...

Last week the Turkish parliament voted to put a referendum to the public that would, if passed, allow the government to pack the country's top courts, another secularist pillar, with its own people.

Oh, and America's favorability rating among Turks, at around 14% according to recent polls, is plumbing an all-time low, despite Barack Obama's presidency and his unprecedented outreach to Muslims in general and Turks in particular. In 2004, the year of Abu Ghraib, it was 30%.

May 11, 2010 at 4:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236270385307174.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

* I KNOW... I KNOW... YOU'VE HEARD IT ALL BEFORE. TOUGH!

Fannie Mae yesterday announced its 11th consecutive quarterly loss - $11.5 billion - and asked for another $8.4 billion in taxpayer assistance. When it comes to losing money, nobody does it better than this government-created mortgage investor.

Fannie Mae is the Cal Ripken of bad real-estate deals, reliably pouring taxpayer money into the housing market. (Granted, Fannie faces tough competition from its toxic twin, Freddie Mac, which last week announced its own request for another $10.6 billion from taxpayers.)

Once the checks from Treasury clear, Fan and Fred will have consumed a combined $145 billion in taxpayer cash, and the end is nowhere in sight. Both companies warned of further losses triggering more government assistance, which is now unlimited after a 2009 Treasury decision.

* THE TREASURY UNDER TAX CHEAT TIMOTHY GEITHNER - PRESIDENT OBAMA'S HAND-PICKED APPOINTEE. (*SHRUG*)

The losses are unlimited because the companies are now run by the government not to make money, by deliberately subsidizing housing. In yesterday's press release, CEO Mike Williams didn't even pretend that he's running a profit-making business. "In the first quarter we continued to serve as a leading source of liquidity to the mortgage market, and we made solid progress in our ongoing efforts to keep people in their homes," he said. These efforts to support the Obama anti-foreclosure program resulted in a doubling of loan modifications compared to the previous quarter.

Ramping up modifications makes perfect sense in the upside-down world of Fannie Mae. The company also announced that most of the loans it modified in the first three quarters of 2009 had gone delinquent again within six months. Talk about an exciting business opportunity!

In case anyone still hasn't gotten the joke, the company also clarified yesterday that its directors "are not obligated to consider the interests of the company" unless the government tells them to do so.

* THE WSJ SHITS YOU NOT, MY FRIENDS... (*HEADACHE*)

The real joke is that the Obama Administration and Senator Chris Dodd have collaborated on a financial regulatory-reform bill that includes no reform of Fan or Fred.

* OH... AND JUST TO REMIND YOU, FOLKS... BARNEY FRANK IS STILL CHAIRMAN OF THE HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE.

May 11, 2010 at 4:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236502953055276.html

* I HAVEN'T POSTED MUCH (ANYTHING...???0 ON THE KAGAN NOMINATION YET, BUT THIS IS WORTH FORWARDING.

* BE PREPARED, FOLLOW CONSERVATIVES; IT'S NOT AN ATTACK PIECE; IT'S ACTUALLY A "CLARIFICATION" DEFENSE. WELL WORTH READING PRIOR TO DELVING FURTHER INTO THE ISSUE AS COUNTER-ARGUMENTS POP UP.

May 11, 2010 at 4:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703674704575233891226203932.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703674704575233891226203932.html

In a sense, Europe has decided to TARP itself. German taxpayers have undertaken to underwrite the spending of Southern European governments, with Greece playing AIG, and Portugal starring as Citigroup. Spain, we suppose, is Goldman Sachs.

Such bailouts are expressly prohibited by the 1992 Maastricht treaty, and that promise is now in tatters.

* SAME HERE IN THE GOOD OLD U.S.A.; THE RULE OF LAW MEANS NOTHING IF YOU HAVE THE PROPER POLITICAL CONNECTIONS.

In the euro's first serious test, the political class blinked. The resulting moral hazard will haunt the single currency for years and reduce the incentive for governments to keep their fiscal houses in order.

The real euro crisis, in short, is one of overspending and policies that sabotage economic growth. Sunday's shock and awe campaign has merely postponed that reckoning - and at a fearsome price.

May 11, 2010 at 4:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/topofthetimes/topstories/la-fg-israel-idle-20100511,0,6313284.story

Nearly one in five Israeli men between the ages of 35 and 54 do not work, including Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, says Dan Ben-David. As their numbers rise, so does the economic peril, he says.

Nearly 27% of Arab men and 65% of ultra-Orthodox Jews don't work, government figures show. The non-employment rate for ultra-Orthodox men has tripled since 1970, Ben-David said.

"We support a lifestyle of nonworking that is pretty unparalleled in the Western world," said Ben-David, who is also a Tel Aviv University professor. "On the one hand, we have this state-of-the-art part of the economy. Then there is the rest of the country that is like a huge drag."

What worries Ben-David most is that the nonproductive part of Israel's population, which survives largely on welfare, is also the fastest growing.

Today Arabs and the ultra-Orthodox together make up less than 30% of the population, but they account for nearly half of school-age children. If trends continue unchecked, Arab and ultra-Orthodox children could make up 78% of Israeli classrooms, recent studies have shown.

"Eventually it's going to break the bank," the economist said. "We're on trajectories that are not sustainable."

May 11, 2010 at 4:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-11/germany-france-may-compromise-aaa-ratings-on-european-union-ponzi-game-.html

Germany and France are among top- rated euro-area states that may compromise their AAA grades by standing behind the debts of weaker members with their 750 billion-euro ($955 billion) stabilization fund.

The package is “making debt profiles deteriorate, potentially damaging the ratings of core sovereigns,” said Stefan Kolek, a strategist at UniCredit SpA in Munich. “It’s a kind of Ponzi game at the highest level.”

* WHAT'S THAT...???

“It’s a kind of Ponzi game at the highest level.”

* ONE MORE TIME...

“It’s a kind of Ponzi game at the highest level.”

(*SMIRK*)

May 11, 2010 at 4:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://article.nationalreview.com/433347/the-imarburyi-myth/robert-lowry-clinton

‘We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the Court says it is.”

These famous words of future Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes have become a cliché for judicial supremacy - the idea that the Supreme Court is the ultimate, exclusive interpreter of the Constitution, having the final word on all matters pertaining to its meaning. And almost everyone now believes that judicial supremacy is based on Marbury v. Madison, decided by the Court in 1803.

While it is true that Marbury provides a basis for judicial review - the Court’s power to invalidate laws in a limited range of cases - it provides no support whatever for judicial supremacy.

* A BIT OF BACKGROUND:

In its Marbury opinion, the Court (per Chief Justice John Marshall) ruled that Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which authorized the Court to issue writs of mandamus in original (trial) jurisdiction to any “persons holding office under the authority of the United States,” impermissibly enlarged the Court’s jurisdiction beyond the terms of Article III of the Constitution, which restricts the Court’s trial jurisdiction to cases involving ambassadors, public ministers, consuls, or states. This meant that, although Marbury had a legal right to his commission that was violated by Madison’s failure to perform a ministerial duty, the Court could not provide the requested relief because the congressional extension of the Court’s jurisdiction was unconstitutional.

In the final pages of his Marbury opinion, Chief Justice Marshall argued that a legislative act in conflict with the Constitution is void, and then carefully restricted the Court’s power to invalidate such acts to instances in which the Court is forced to ignore either the Constitution or the statute in order to decide a particular case. The only time this situation can arise is when the constitutional and statutory provisions involved are addressed to the Court itself, as in Marbury.

(In other words, under Marbury’s reasoning, the Court is not entitled to “reach out” and invalidate a legislative act simply because the Court doesn’t like it, or even because the Court believes that some other agency of government has done something unconstitutional.)

Thus, Marbury-style judicial review is very limited in scope. It is restricted to cases in which Congress has unconstitutionally meddled with the Court’s functions. This is surely why the case was largely ignored by courts and legal commentators as a precedent for judicial review until the late 19th century.

* BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT... KNOW THAT "MARBURY" WAS LARGELY IGNORED BY "CONTEMPORARY" COURTS WITHIN THE PRE-CIVIL WAR "POST COLONIAL" ERA!

* To be continued...

May 11, 2010 at 5:40 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUSION... (Part 2 of 2)

The Court itself didn’t notice that Marbury had anything to do with judicial review until 1887, and even then it misread the case as authorizing judicial review of state law - which Marbury had nothing to do with. It was not until 1895 that the Court first cited Marbury as a precedent for judicial review of national law, despite having invalidated some 20 congressional acts by that time.

Stop and think for a moment about what this means: The case that is used as the leading precedent for modern judicial supremacy was not even regarded as an instance of judicial review until 92 years after it was decided!

All told, of the 88 citations of Marbury by justices of the Supreme Court between 1803 and 1957, only ten refer to the judicial power to invalidate laws, and all ten advance highly restrictive notions of that power, confining it to a narrow range of cases. (Nowhere can we find even a suggestion that the Court is the ultimate or exclusive arbiter of all constitutional questions.)

If Marbury really authorized judicial supremacy, why wouldn’t someone on the Court have said so during its first century and a half?

* ARE YOU FOLLOWING THIS, FOLKS...???

It was in 1958 that everything changed. Over the next 48 years, there were 137 separate citations of Marbury, a number far eclipsing the total of the previous 154 years.

* SEEING A TREND HERE, PEOPLE...???

During this period, Marbury was employed 67 times to support judicial review, 21 times to justify sweeping assertions of judicial power, and at least ten times to support the idea that the Court is the “final” or “ultimate” interpreter of the Constitution, with power to issue binding proclamations to any other agency or department of government respecting any constitutional issue - including the constitutional powers of those other departments. (In the earliest of these decisions, the Little Rock school-desegregation case of 1958, the Court went so far as to suggest that its constitutional decisions were on par with the Constitution itself, claiming Marbury as its authority.)

In sum, the Court’s own history shows that judicial supremacy originated neither in Marbury nor in the Constitution nor in the Marshall era. It was established by the Warren Court and developed subsequently by the Burger and Rehnquist Courts.

Why does all this matter? First, during the past half-century, the Court has rendered dozens of politically charged decisions with dubious legal and historical backing. Most of these decisions would be inconceivable without the enlargement of judicial power that the Marbury myth supports. Second, and more important, the separation of powers has been unbalanced by judicial supremacy. Third, and most important, American democracy itself has been compromised.

Throughout the first century and a half of our national existence, constitutional interpretation was performed continuously by all three branches of the federal government - by Congress and the president as much as by the Court.

* TODAY... THE PRESIDENT DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION... FEW (IF ANY) MEMBERS OF CONGRESS CARE ABOUT IT... EVEN THE SUPREME COURT ITSELF... FOUR MEMBERS REJECT THE CONSTITUTION, ONE MEMBER HAS NO CONSTITUTIONAL ANCHOR, AND OF THE FOUR "CONSERVATIVES" ONLY THOMAS CLEARLY VIEWS PRECEDENT AS SUBSERVIENT TO CONSTITUTIONAL DICTATE.

May 11, 2010 at 5:41 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=532832

At Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on democracy. We are not making this up.

* IT IS AMAZING - EVEN I ADMIT TO BEING... er... SURPRISED BY THE PRESIDENT'S PUBLIC COMMENTS. (*SHRUG*)

The "24/7 media environment," he told the students, "bombards us with all kinds of comments and exposes us to all kinds of arguments..."

(*SNORT*)

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations - none of which I know how to work - information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a means of emancipation," Obama said.

* A COUPLE POINTS... 1) HAVEN'T IPODS BEEN AROUND FOR FOUR OR FIVE YEARS NOW; HASN'T PLAYSTATION BEEN AROUND FOR SOMETHING LIKE 20 YEARS...???

In this administration, freedom of speech, press or information is a distraction and a threat. n this administration, freedom of speech, press or information is a distraction and a threat. ... The real problem for Obama and those who would help him in his promised fundamental transformation of America is that all this technology and information has let the average citizen determine the truth for himself or herself. It's what gave rise to the Tea Party movement and community organizers of the right. Ah, there's the rub.

May 11, 2010 at 5:41 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37084075

US taxpayers could be on the hook for $50 billion or more as part of the European debt bailout...

(*SIGH*) WITHOUT A VOTE OF CONGRESS, FOLKS... (*FROWN*)

[O]ne rule-of-thumb formula puts potential US exposure at $54 billion should the entire IMF loan fund be tapped.

* OH... GET THIS...

And that doesn't count the added exposure created by the Federal Reserve's decision over the weekend to participate in currency swaps to provide liquidity to jittery European banks.

"Inflation and debt is not the answer to a problem caused by inflation and debt," said Michael Pento, chief economist at Delta Global Advisors and a critic of both the European plan and the Fed's approach to US fiscal stability. "It's a European problem that should have been dealt with by Europeans."

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

In Washington, the White House said taxpayers will not be liable for the European bailout.

* YEAH...??? WELL THEN LET'S SEE OBAMA SIGN OVER HIS HOUSE, HIS SAVINGS, AND ALL FUTURE EARNINGS TOWARDS SECURITY ON THE "LOAN." (*SMIRK*)

* JEEZUS... AS IF WHAT OBAMA CLAIMS HAS ANY CONNECTION TO REALITY... (*SNICKER*)

* OH... AND THEN THERE'S THE CURRENCY SWAPS...

The US has virtually unlimited exposure in that situation as it loans dollars to foreign banks in exchange for euros...

Pandl said the swaps transactions could total as much as $100 billion Pandl said the swaps transactions could total as much as $100 billion...

(*SIGH*)

May 11, 2010 at 5:42 PM

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